Terror Panic at Swedish School

Children in a school in Värmdö were left in shock yesterday after listening to a fake radio broadcast that Stockholm had been attacked by terrorists.

The programme, an ”educational role play”, was so realistic that the children, aged between 13 and 15, began to panic.

While the broadcast did not quite have the impact of Orson Wells’ famous 1938 radio dramatisation of ”War of the Worlds” , when New York and New Jersey residents thought they were under attack by martians, children at Hemmesta School were crying and calling their parents.

The head of the school explained that the educational drama method was meant to let the children experience events in a surprising way. She has apologised that it went wrong.